Rowland Sentencing Postponed While He Presses Claim of Withheld Evidence

Jessica Hill / Associated Press

In this Sept. 18, 2014 file photo, former Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland, second from right, arrives with his family at federal court in New Haven. Rowland was convicted on charges stemming from a scheme to hide payment for work on a congressional political campaign.

In this Sept. 18, 2014 file photo, former Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland, second from right, arrives with his family at federal court in New Haven. Rowland was convicted on charges stemming from a scheme to hide payment for work on a congressional political campaign. (Jessica Hill / Associated Press)

A judge has granted former Gov. John G. Rowland's request to postpone the imposition of what could be a lengthy prison sentence while his lawyers press a claim that prosecutors withheld evidence at his trial for campaign-related crimes in September.

Rowland was scheduled to be sentenced to as much as 37 to 46 months on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in New Haven. Judge Janet Bond Arterton indefinitely postponed the sentencing after a conference Monday with parties to the case.

It is likely that Rowland, his government prosecutors and the court will next decide on a schedule to address an 11th hour claim by the former governor that prosecutors failed to disclose to him evidence that he argues might have supported his assertion of innocence.

Rowland was convicted by a jury in September of six felony and misdemeanor charges – including obstruction of justice – for conspiring to violate federal campaign reporting laws by concealing his role as a paid consultant to a 2012 Congressional campaign.

Rowland is accused with the candidate, Lisa Wilson-Foley, and her husband, Brian Foley, the owner of a chain of nursing homes and source of $35,000 in consulting fees to Rowland. Rowland argued in his defense that he broke no laws because was paid for providing consulting services to the nursing home chain while volunteering for the campaign.

Brian Foley cooperated with the investigation. Testifying as the chief prosecution witness, Foley said Rowland's purported work for the nursing home was a fiction he and the ex-governor created to conceal Rowland's paid work for the Congressional campaign. Wilson-Foley provided a key piece of evidence to government investigators, but did not reach a cooperation agreement and did not testify.

Prosecutors are seeking a 10-month sentence for Wilson-Foley and suggested they would be satisfied with something substantially less than a year for Foley. Foley is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 9 and his wife on Jan. 13. Both pleaded guilty last year to a single misdemeanor charge.

In the most recent filing with the court, Wilson-Foley lawyer Craig A. Raabe argues for leniency by describing the former Congressional candidate as collateral damage in an obsessive effort by the government to imprison Rowland on a long, felony sentence.

Raabe argues that federal prosecutors are still angry at a relatively lenient sentence of about 10 months that Rowland was given after his first conviction in 2004, when he pleaded guilty to taking payments from state contractors in 2004. Raabe said Wilson-Foley is accused of the "lowest level criminal offense in the federal justice system" and would not have been charged if not for her association with Rowland.

"With that in mind, and with near certainty, if Brian Foley had covertly paid John Doe rather than John Rowland $35,000 … Ms. Wilson-Foley would not be in federal court charged with any crime – nor would she face the possibility of incarceration," Raabe wrote.

In asking for a postponement, Rowland does not argue that he has learned of some previously unknown new evidence, but rather that federal prosecutors failed to fully apprise him of all aspects of evidence that has been publicly known for months and that was at the center of his trial.

Prosecutors have an obligation to provide defendants with all evidence supporting their innocence and Rowland says his prosecutors may have failed in that obligation. Neither Rowland's lawyers not his prosecutors would discuss the matter.

Rowland said the evidence in dispute was first made available to him on Dec. 29 through the first of two, long memoranda that Wilson-Foley filed with the court. In the first memo, Wilson-Foley argues that she should be spared a prison sentence because she had minimal involvement in what she characterizes as a trivial offense.

In the memo, Wilson-Foley asserts that, for a period of time, she thought her campaign arrangement with Rowland was legal because her husband told her it had been approved by a Washington, D.C.-based, campaign lawyer. The Washington lawyer offered the opinion that, as long as Rowland was doing legitimate work for Foley's nursing home chain, he was free to volunteer for Wilson-Foley without reporting the work to the Federal Election Commission.

Wilson-Foley also argued that she told prosecutors long before Rowland's trial that her husband and his top nursing home executive had repeatedly assured her that Rowland was performing legitimate work for the nursing home chain.

Even though she suggests she had been misled by her husband, Wilson-Foley acknowledges that she eventually acquired sufficient knowledge of a phony employment contract between Rowland and her husband to make her guilty of participation in the conspiracy.

Rowland claims that if he had been aware of the assertions Wilson-Foley's memo, he could have used the information to support his case at trial.

The jury dismissed Rowland's defense, after about six hours of deliberation. Earlier, jurors heard Foley call Rowland's claim of employment by the nursing home chain a fraud and the legal opinion one of a series of steps he had taken to make the employment agreement appear legitimate. Foley testified that he and Rowland knew they were circumventing federal election laws

"I tried to legitimize it in many ways, so if it was ever examined, it would pass muster," Foley testified.

He testified that he misled the campaign law firm, never disclosing that he hired Rowland as a nursing home consultant to cover what was to be his real work on the Wilson-Foley campaign.